Proper Positioning for your Ring Video Doorbell

Question: How do I place my Ring Video Doorbell to pick up the motions of people while minimizing picking up cars and other sources of "false positive" motion alerts?

Answer: The proper positioning of your Ring Video Doorbell depends on a number of factors including the layout of your yard, the distance from the front door to the street, objects within the Ring Doorbell's field of view, height of the door and more. This article will describe how your Ring Video Doorbell "sees" the world and the factors that go into good Ring Video Doorbell placement.

Seeing the world two ways

Your Ring Doorbell sees the world in two ways. First, the camera on your Ring Doorbell has a very wide view of the world as illustrated below:

One of the biggest mistakes people make is mounting their Ring Doorbell too high in the mistaken belief that they need to do this in order to catch people's faces. In fact, as illustrated above, viewing faces is not a problem if the Ring Doorbell is mounted at the correct height of approximately 48 inches above the ground.

The second way your Ring Doorbell sees the world is through a network of PIR or "Passive Infrared" motion sensors. These are heat sensors that detect motion by monitoring heat within the detection area. Since people are hotter than the surrounding areas, as a person enter the detection area the heat measurements change. The motion sensors register this change as movement and send out an alert. As illustrated in the image below, the motion sensors have a much more focused field of view than the camera:

The motion sensors in your Ring Video Doorbell are designed to detect motion up to 180 degrees horizontally and from five to 30 feet outward from the fixture. They're also more sensitive to horizontal movement across the detection area than vertical. Mount the Ring Doorbell too high and you're more likely to catch the heat of passing cars than the heat of incoming visitors.

Now that you understand how your Ring Video Doorbell sees the world, positioning it properly becomes much easier.

If your Ring Doorbell is already installed or you're unable to change the install location, Click here to read about changing the angle with a wedge mount.